After the election, the user can view the actual Certificates of Ascertainment and Vote from each state once the Federal Register has received and uploaded them to the website.

The new site allows users access to election information from previous Presidential elections. The Federal Register has data as far back as the 1964 election uploaded to the site and will gradually add data from the 1960 election and earlier. Users can see who the candidates were and who won each state and pull up information about the popular vote totals. For example, did you know that a third-party candidate received one electoral vote in 1972?.

The Office of the Federal Register has administered the Electoral College since the 1950s.

NARA has also released this video explaining how the Electoral College works.

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.